Protected: “With My Brothers Standing By”

Posted on September 1, 2011 in omphaloskepsis | Enter your password to view comments.

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Expansion & Contraction

Posted on August 31, 2011 in omphaloskepsis | 2 Comments

I wrote 9 posts in August 2011, and today’s the last day of August, so unless I get a dozen up in one day (which I’m not about to do), this will be the least amount I’ve written on Sugarbutch since Spring 2007, according to the archives. (And the main reason those months have so few entries is because most of them were taken down.)

I have been writing. And I’ve been so busy. I’ve been traveling, and in the short weeks that I’ve been at home I have barely felt as though I’ve fully returned. I’ve been writing with Dacia frequently and watching as her book develops, feeling jealous and envious and elated and supportive and so thrilled to read it as it’s being birthed out of her, and wishing that I was working on a book of my own.

I do have these erotica anthologies coming out, but that’s not quite the same as a single-author full-length manuscript. Which I just ache to write, but can’t quite seem to get a grip on. Yet.

All the traveling has been exploding my brain with insight. The Pulse retreat was amazing. The Butch Voices conference was enlightening and enlivening and made me love my butch and moc bros even more. The Gender Outlaw retreat I just returned from felt like a gift on a silver platter … and I don’t even know how to start writing about it.

I crave blogging. I crave sitting down and telling you about my day, or my emotional insight, or the mind-blowing sex, or what I’ve been writing today. All of which have been happening. It’s a challenge to be that open and honest here, for lots of reasons. What used to feel like a sanctuary now feels like a podium and microphone in front of hundreds of people, so I psych myself out.

What do I even want to tell you? How do I begin to explain the last six weeks? What do you want to know? I’ll try to write a bit more. Perhaps a daily writing practice that goes here into this little wordpress box instead of into my journal for a while.

There are a lot more retreats and workshops coming up. I’m pitching to colleges now, trying to revisit some of the places I’ve been before, and lots more writing planned in the near future. I’m doing some new trainings, I’m looking toward the future. I keep noticing all these new opportunities to get credentials, like the SARs at the CSPH and I seem to remember there being a training starting in the fall at the Center for Sex & Culture in SF that caught my eye, but I can’t find any information about that now. (That’s the trouble with reading half of the internet every day.) So suddenly there are quite a few opportunities I’m curious to follow, but I’m having trouble coming up with enough cash. My unemployment runs out soon, actually.

I’m looking for work, possibly part-time, definitely things I can do from home. I’ve done some copy consulting lately and that has gone well; I’m still available to build websites and graphics in general. I am putting together some packages and things to offer more formally, but I would love to have a steady 20 hour a week type of gig so I can still travel. The freelance thing I’ve done for the past almost-two years has been working, kind of, I’ve been scraping by, but it’s time to have a bit more security. I’ll gladly take suggestions.

I miss writing here, but I do love being out in the world. It’s been a good couple months for events and growth and change. And hey, I’ll even have some photos to share (as soon as I get the proofs).

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On Erotic Energy Retreat (Again)

Posted on July 25, 2011 in omphaloskepsis | 3 Comments

Photo taken by me the first year I attended

I’m off, yet again, to a desert valley in New Mexico full of beautiful hot springs and a circle of women who are coming to delve into our erotic energy, power, and pleasure.

This year, the erotic energy school that I’ve studied with for about 10 years is going through some changes, and some of the facilitators and staff are meeting before the workshop to discuss the new directions we might take. I’m looking forward to having a part in shaping the women’s programs—I particularly want to bring in more genderqueer, trans, queer, and masculine of center focused programming.

It’s been a tough month here at Sugarbutch, you may’ve noticed that I haven’t posted much since Cheryl died. In part that’s because the stupid things seem so much more stupid … and also because I’ve been quietly grieving. The School was actually set up in part as a response to the AIDS crisis in the ’80s, so much of the structure of these workshops is actually created to make space for deep grief and loss. I’m not sure what will happen when I have a place to drain it out of my body and into the circle, through this work, but I’m curious about experimenting with the well of emotion that I have been occasionally falling into.

I’m also thinking a lot about sexual aliveness, igniting my first and second chakras especially, though igniting my entire column of energy, all of the chakras, as a way to be more connected with myself.

I’m still not done with the ask me anything questions from Sugarbutch’s 5th anniversary, though I’ve been working on three different questions that are all about how to get off faster or easier (with a variety of circumstances), and I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately. I too have some frustration that I can’t always get off easily in the particular way that I want to (meaning, strapped on and fucking), and I want to see if I can let go of that a little bit, or figure out how to ignite my energies in other ways. I don’t know what I mean by this exactly, but I want to go in there and explore. And hopefully report back about my experiences.

I wrote a bit about last year’s retreat, which was fairly difficult in some ways, though certainly still enlivening and strengthening and amazing. I learned a lot about my role in these circles, about holding space, and about what it’s like to bring masculinity into a space for women (although I’ve been learning about that ongoing for years, this was a slightly different experience with it).

This year, there are even more queer folks attending, and I’m packing some of the new gender expression toys I’ve been acquiring, like the Pete packing undies and the STP packer, and I’m looking forward to seeing what kind of edges I can push with my own masculinity, sadism, dominance, and feminine yang.

If you’re interested in knowing more about these retreats I coordinate, you can leave a comment with your email address or email me directly and I’ll be glad to add you to the (small, private) list I have, where I send out notifications of what’s coming up. We are working on a gender/queer base-level retreat sometime this fall in the Bay Area, and hopefully another base-level retreat for women of all/any type (not just queer) in the spring in (or near) New York City.

I’ll be back next week.

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What I Read (For Cheryl)

Posted on July 24, 2011 in omphaloskepsis | 2 Comments

Cheryl’s memorial was yesterday. More than two hundred people attended, brought food, and comforted each other, and fifteen people read some of their own thoughts and some of Cheryl’s work.

I hosted the event. It was the hardest reading I’ve ever done. I felt like I called on more of my tantra and energy/space holding abilities more than I used my reading host skills, though both of course were present. In putting together the line-up, I thought a lot about how much Cheryl has taught me about hosting readings, stage presence, how to order it, how to keep it moving, what to say and how to banter between readers. I learned so much in such a short time, she really knew what she was doing.

I had a pretty strict script so as not to babble, which, if you’ve ever seen me host a reading, you know I can tend to do. So here’s the part that I read.

Hello everyone. Thank you for being here at Dixon Place to celebrate Cheryl B.

We’re all here because we knew Cheryl, because she touched us in some way. Some of Cheryl’s accomplishments are listed in the chapbook/program, but we all know that she was widely anthologized, created three reading series in New York City in the last ten years, and performed all over the US, UK and Canada.

I’ve known Cheryl since I moved to New York in 2005. She was one of the first people I met in the literary performance circles. We kept being booked for the same readings, and eventually became friendly, then friends. She read at my chapbook release party in 2007, we started working together in 2009, and then started a reading series, Sideshow: the Queer Literary Carnival, together in 2010. I was there throughout her diagnosis of Hodgkin’s lymphoma last November, through the chemo treatment, which I even accompanied her to (once), and through her hospitalization.

What has struck me consistently in thinking about which story to tell about Cheryl here has been the transformation which happened after she was diagnosed. Cheryl had a dark, cynical sense of humor, and was private, often feeling alienated. But when she truly needed help from her friends and her larger community, you all—we—surprised her by offering up our support, our pies, our cars for rides, our wallets for Fresh Direct gift cards, our time, and our prayers.

I saw how much it meant to her that everyone rallied, throwing spelling bee fundraisers, offering research, and sending emails of support. Cheryl opened up and took in that love in a way that I’d never seen her do before.

Kelli told me that at the end, when she and Cheryl were doing some woo-woo aspirations that clearly were Kelli’s idea, Cheryl chose to say “I am thankful for my community,” and she didn’t even roll her eyes.

More than anything else, I’m so glad this event is an opportunity to get all of us together, all of us who loved and cared for Cheryl, and who love and care for Kelli, to look around the room and acknowledge what a community ourpouring of love looks like.

Tonight, you’ll hear some of her work read by some artists, writers, and friends, from Cheryl’s brother, and a few videos of Cheryl herself.

– Readers –

Thank you to all the readers for coming and being here today.

I’d like to conclude by reading one of my favorite poems, which has been a comfort to me lately. You’ll notice it’s not in Cheryl’s style, but I’d like to offer it up as a prayer, in whatever way that means to you.

The Summer Day by Mary Oliver

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

Thank you all for being here. Thank you Dixon Place, thank you to the volunteers who helped us set up and will help us clean up, thank you United Stages and Kathleen Warnock for the beautiful program/chapbooks. Thanks to Genne and Bevin for helping to coordinate this event, thank you Kelli for your beautiful heart and friendship, to all of us.

There is a new writer’s fund set up in Cheryl’s name through the Astraea Foundation; you can donate on your way out. When there are more events to raise funds for the Cheryl B. Fund, you can find out about them on wtfcancerdiaries.com.

You are also welcome to take a book from Cheryl’s collection, we have a donation hat next to it if you’d like to contribute.

And please remember to support each other, tonight and ongoing.

Thank you for being here.

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Gender Celebration Blog Carnival: Living Gender

Posted on July 15, 2011 in omphaloskepsis, on butches | 9 Comments

Ellie Lumpesse has been curating a Gender Celebration Blog Carnival, and today’s my day to participate. The topic is “living gender.”

You can check out a few of the other participants, if you like: Curvaceous Dee wrote about what makes her a woman; Sexpert Jane Blow wrote about her perceived gender; Eusimto wrote about gender anarchy; Dangerous Lilly wrote about labels and being politically correct. Still to come are neamhspleachas and Ellie.

I hope this Gender Celebration Carnival will keep going! I think it could drum up some great conversation.

–

I don’t know when it happened exactly.

One day I just woke up and felt good in my skin. I went to my closet and felt good about the choices of clothing I had to offer. I dressed and looked in the mirror and I felt good about my reflection. I saw a photograph of myself and I smiled, and saw me.

It wasn’t always that way.

I didn’t used to recognize myself in photographs. I didn’t used to feel good about the pieces of clothing I would pull on to pull together an outfit. But somewhere along the way, things started shifting, and improved.

I probably can’t even put my finger on it. Not an exact date or time.

I remember when I threw out most of my clothes that were purchased in the girl’s department, going through my closet and my drawers with each piece: where did this one come from? This one? This one? and sifting them all into neat piles. I remember bringing home bags full of button-downs and polo shirts from the thrift store to try to rebuild some new version of me, some version that had swagger and dated girls and knew how to fuck. I remember buying three-packs of undershirts and three-packs of briefs and trying to figure out from the packaging what size I would be.

I remember trying on various versions of these in photo sets, self-portraits I would take of myself on my bed, against a wall, with an upturned lamp pointed at my face. Sometimes with a timer, sometimes from arm’s length. I have found folders and folders of these photos recently, with titles like “playing butch dressup” and “self butch” and “new clothes” and “wife beater a-shirt.” There were others: “lipstick” and “cat costume” and “corset” and “cleavage,” all carefully labeled in folders, back in the digital day before Picasa and iPhoto would keep everything organized for you.

But it wasn’t all about clothes and presentation.

They say there are many components to gender: chromosomes, genitals, hormones, external presentation, internal sense of self, and yes, of course, socialization and performance. Gender is not all of any of these things, it is not all performance, it is not all socialized. Some of it is innate. Some of it is about genitals. I believe there are many factors.

Gender is also about energy.

I remember studying some classmates in college: the way they sat, the way they held their pens, the way they slung their bookbags over their shoulders and defiantly walked out of the classroom door, shoulders back head high chin up. A little daring, a little rebellious. They sat with their legs open, taking up lots of space. I mimicked them. I practiced sliding low in a chair and splaying my knees.

I noticed that these people got lower grades than I did for doing the same work, because they were perceived to be not paying attention.

And then, when I started mimicking them daily, when my mimery became mine and became a slightly altered version of a copy of a copy of a copy, I started getting ignored by those same professors, started getting glossed over when my hand was up, started wondering why I wasn’t perceived as the straight-A front row apple-for-the-teacher student that I was.

Oh. Right. My gender.

But it wasn’t always like that. It was easier to recognize a straight-A student as a girl, apparently. My board shorts and polo shirts were not proper enough to be seen as part of academia, but my brain hadn’t changed. Curiouser and curiouser.

(That was workable, however. All it took was a few office hours visits with those professors and my participation in class looked much different.)

The other thing that changed was the girls. Suddenly I was visible, a catch, someone dateable. I had three dates in a week, once, in college, and my mind was a little bit boggled. (I didn’t sleep with any of them, or rather, none of them slept with me, but hey, at least I was getting out there! At least I was being noticed!)

I got a Facebook message from the mom of one of my childhood friends recently that said, “You look exactly the same.” I’m not sure what she meant by that, because to me I look so completely different. But I think she was trying to express some gender validation, some gender celebration, telling me that though my external appearance may seem radically different, that there was a similarity, a thread running through all of my life experiences that was me, at the core.

What I want to tell you is that now, I recognize myself in the mirror. Now, I don’t get up and obsess about gender before I even put on my clothes. Now, I get my hair cut every three weeks and keep it shorn tight in the back and on the sides. Now, I don’t debate if it’s a cliche to keep my hair short, I don’t wonder if perhaps I should grow it back out because lesbians should have options, I keep it short because I know I want to. I keep briefs in my underwear drawer because I know all the options, and those are what I like. I collect ties and cufflinks. I shop unapologetically in the men’s department and I don’t even know my sizes translated into women’s anymore: I’m 8 1/2, 34/30, M, 16. I feel handsome and beautiful and attractive and at peace with my body—at least, most of the time. It has taken time, I’m 32, but I don’t think about my own gender, and wonder what it would be like, living daily, if it felt comfortable, anymore.

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Cheryl B.

Posted on June 19, 2011 in omphaloskepsis | 14 Comments

photo by Syd London

Cheryl B. died yesterday, Saturday morning. I’m not sure what I can say yet. A couple other people are able to be more articulate than me: Sassafras Lowrey at Lambda Literary.org, Kathleen Warnock at Too Many Hats. Edit: Here’s a few more, Anne Elliott on Ass Backwords, Rachel Kramer Bussel on Lusty Lady.

We made a little video for Cheryl at April’s Sideshow.

Sideshow Loves Cheryl from Sinclair Sexsmith on Vimeo.

I’d like to post some videos of her poetry soon. I miss her.

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Piercing, Waxing, & Other Body Modifications as Sex Toys

Posted on June 18, 2011 in Kristen, omphaloskepsis | 6 Comments

EDIT: I scheduled this piece to publish today last week, when I was going through my drafts folder and discovered I’d never published it here (it originally appeared on Good Vibes Magazine). It seems a bit trite, after this weekend. More information about Cheryl is coming in the next few days, as we start planning what’s next.

Kristen and I drove to Philadelphia in February to see the piercing master Elayne Angel, to get Kristen’s nipples pierced and to have her pierce one of my cocks.

In all of the talk of piercing in the last few months since we both decided these piercings might be something we wanted to pursue, I started thinking about my tongue piercing again and that I would like to have it again. I had it pierced first in 2001 (ten years ago … is that right?! I think so) and then took it out in early 2006, only to have a piercer re-open the hole (which was only a tiny bit closed, so much easier the second time) in late 2007, and then took it out again in early 2009, which was before Kristen and I got together. So she never got the chance to kiss me with it. She said she’d kissed other people who have had one, but nothing more than that. And I had developed a few tricks with it, believe you me.

Of all the piercings I’ve had—and I’ve had 11 different ones, three below the neck, some of which I have had pierced more than once—my tongue is the one I like the most. But I have, as I tend to say, “a teeth thing,” which has in the past been a pretty serious dental phobia and now it just a former phobia (I think) and a general fear of breaking teeth or damaging teeth. So that doesn’t go very well with a metal bar through my tongue.

I took it out last time on a whim and then regretted it, wishing that I’d instead bought a spacer bar to keep it open instead of removing it entirely, or a bar with flat ends instead of the silver balls so it stays closer to my tongue and doesn’t click on my teeth when I talk or eat.

With all this talk of piercings, I started wishing I still had the bar in my tongue, and I decided about a week ago to see if I could get it through—and I could! It was quite easy, and while it was tender for a day or two it wasn’t more than adjusting, no actual damage. I found that I had actually bought a bar with flat ends (why didn’t I use that before? Not sure) and now that it feels back to normal, not swelling or sore, I slipped that in with the ball on top and the flat disc on the bottom just this morning.

It feels good. I like it.

I’ve noticed, in the week since I’ve had it in my mouth, that I am much more inclined to kiss Kristen with tongue, to touch it to her tongue, to get it into her mouth in some way than I was before. I wouldn’t say I dislike tongue kissing (at all!) but I do think generally people use their tongues too much when they kiss and that the lips are the good, best parts. But Kristen really likes tongue kisses generally … so this is a little bit different.

I’m also noticing that since Kristen got both nipples pierced that I want to touch them more. I can’t, really, yet, as they heal, for at least a week or so, but I find myself wanting to ask her to take her shirt off so I can see them, and wanting to touch or kiss or play with them already. She loves attention toward her tits, and probably generally I could do more of that, so this is a happy side effect of the piercing for her.

This morning, over breakfast, as we were discussing what we had to get done (on Kristen’s first real day off since her job started in early February), she mentioned she was going to get her pussy waxed. Which I love. Not because it’s something I expect her to do or require her to do or think is more feminine or part of any sort of beauty standard—I believe everyone has the right to sculpt or play with or explore their own body hair in whichever ways they want to, and that they can change that at any time—but because I love touching, kissing, playing with her pussy after she gets it done.

A friend of ours had hers waxed for the first time recently, and when I asked how it went she said, “My girlfriend could not keep her face out of my pussy for four days.”

Yeah. It’s like that. I see it all bare and I want to suck her lips into my mouth. Same with her nipples—I see them all pink and pert and I want to pinch them, lick them.

To Kristen this morning I said, “Between the waxing and the piercing, I’m going to have a hard time keeping my hands off you.”

Which, I expect, is at least part of the point! And which feels like a really good place to be in, given some of our recent complications.

It’s not that I expect any of these things—pierced tongue, pierced nipples, waxed pussy—to be something that anyone does, and if Kristen had showed no interest in nipple piercing or pussy waxing I never would push her to do either. But she was enthusiastic, interested in exploring what it would be like to modify her body in those ways, and personally, I think those are some significant ways to play with this amazing sexy tool of a body that we all have.

I don’t believe it should be a double standard, either—I too am responsible for the maintenance and upkeep of my own body hair, and in doing things that make her want to touch me or pleasure me. I’ve started to think of my gym routine as directly related to our sex life, because while it not only helps me build strength and stamina physically, it makes me feel stronger and more alive, with more confidence, something that can only help in the bedroom.

And I’m interested in enhancing my own body for sexual pleasure. I’m not sure if I’ll get another piercing. If I do, it’d be a clit piercing of some sort, probably a triangle, though I’m not sure about that. I’m especially not sure what it would be like to strap on and have a clit piercing, though I would hope it would make things better, which would be part of the point.

I often think of piercing as a way to enhance both sensation and attention toward a particular body part. Similarly to getting a tattoo—You may not notice someone’s forearms, but if they have a ring around it or a visual symbol of some sort, it draws much more attention to it. Plus piercings certainly give exhibitionists an excuse to take their shirts off (or lower their pants), since people are generally interested in how these things look and eager to say yes to an offer of, “Would you like to see?”

She’s definitely more willing to let out her exhibitionist these days. And given that she quite enjoyed the needle going through her nipples, I think she’s coming along quite nicely as a masochist, too. I referred to her as such at the dinner table last night, after the experience, and she protested. “Okay, a masochist-in-training, then,” I responded. That might be more accurate.

Rachel Kramer Bussel has a great recent piece about her experiences with waxing. I like looking at things like waxing that our culture files under “obligatory beauty regimens” as things that we actively choose, knowing full well what we are choosing (like the amount of time it takes to maintain hair removal is quite a lot), and that we choose because we like the way it looks or feels or the way it enhances our sex life. That is a perfectly valid reason to choose something.

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Ask Me Anything: Does Your Family Read Your Blog?

Posted on June 10, 2011 in omphaloskepsis | 4 Comments

Monday asked:

You get really emotionally and sexually candid (even graphic) in some of your writing. I’m wondering if any member of your or Kristen’s family reads this blog. Do they even know it exists? How much do your families know about this part of both of your lives?

My youngest sister also writes a sex blog (though we’re not really out about being related), so she knows. My other (middle) sister (I’m the oldest) also knows, though I don’t think she reads it regularly. I’m not sure how much either of them read, because, I mean, how much do you really want to know about your sibling’s sex life? I do read my sister’s blog, but I tend to skip over the sex parts—we don’t talk a lot these days, since we both have busy lives in big cities. So this is one way for me to kind of keep up with what’s going on with her. I imagine she reads my blog similarly, though I don’t really know.

My parents know that I write lesbian erotica, and that I’ve been published—I was on the phone with my mom once while she searched for my name in Amazon and was, well, a little surprised with the results. I don’t think she really wants to know about the details of my sexuality, though, so I doubt she has read any of the works that are under my birth name.

My parents also know that I lead workshops, though I usually play up the gender aspects and play down the sex part. Though sometimes I’ve said that I’m doing a class at a sex toy store. So there’s some openness about what I do, but I tend to gloss over the details.

As far as I know, they don’t know my pen name, so they don’t read this. But it really wouldn’t be very hard for them to figure it out, thanks to Facebook—I do tend to promote my events, like Sideshow, on my personal Facebook page, so if my parents really wanted to they could figure out that name, find my Sinclair Sexsmith Facebook fan page, and link it back to this site pretty darn easily.

I don’t know about my extended family, though I think some of them know. My uncle runs a small publishing company and lives in New York City, and he published my most recent chapbook and knows about Sideshow, so again, it wouldn’t take much digging for him to know.

And Kristen’s family … I don’t know. Likewise her sister and parents could probably do some digging from Facebook and figure it out, and I suspect they are more inclined to do that than my family is. Her mom did email me at my mrsexsmith gmail address once, which kind of freaked me out. I’m not sure how she got that address or what it means. But Kristen and I have decided to ignore it, basically—either she’s read all the archives or she hasn’t, and until she brings it up and decides to make an issue of it (which I don’t think she will, since that would involve having a direct conversation about things like sex and, moreso, the lesbian relationship her daughter is in), I’m not going to speculate.

So, now that I’ve gone down the laundry list of relatives, there’s one more thing I want to say about families and sex lives.

Dan Savage on the Savage Love podcast (which is the only podcast that I really keep up with), on the February 1, 2011 show, had guest Amy Lang from BirdsandBeesandKids.com on to field questions about parenting, kids, and sex. (I’d link to it directly but it appears the direct links don’t work, so you’ll just have to find it by date.)

At about 30:30, they play a call from someone with a question about nudity and polyamory, and Amy an Dan use it as a way to explore “the line” between what we should and shouldn’t talk to kids about. What is “too open?” What is appropriate, and what is crossing the line?

Dan: We all had a friend whose parents were too open about sex with their kids and their kids friends, which made us uncomfortable.

Amy: Too open about their own sex lives, which is where I’d like to draw the line. American parents are so worried about giving their kids too much information—it is virutlaly impossible for us to give our kids too much information about sex and relationships. The TMI point? Is THAT. Your sex life! Your kids don’t want to know!

Dan: No!

Amy: Do you want to know that your parents had a sex life?

Dan: My parents had a sex life?!

Amy: No! They didn’t!

Dan: Good! Phew!

Now, I think there should be some acceptance that our parents have a sex life, but I do maintain that I don’t want to hear about it. They go on to discuss polyamory and how to go about being open about that to your kids. But I’m less interested in that conversation and more struck by this TMI point. It has influenced the way I think about this stuff, and its easy for me to then draw there : they are not invited to read it because it is too much of my own sex life.

In my experience, writing about my own sex life worked best when I was (more) anonymous. It was easier to write and be open about what I was doing in bed. It’s harder now, not just because I’m more exposed but also because I’m 2 1/2 years into a relationship, and though we are still having great sex, we’re not as exploratory as we used to be—not in a bad way, there’s just less to xplore now that we’ve been exploring for 2 1/2 years (though we did have foot sex for the first time just the other night … and I have two ‘squirting dildoes’ on my desk that we have yet to try out … )—and the edgy stuff in our relationship is the emotional stuff, the fighting and the growth struggle and hard times we’re going through as we’re building our longer term life together. And while I have written about that (a little), it’s hard because it is deep and sometimes too vulnerable to reveal to such a broad (and sometimes unnecessarily critical) audience.

I would like to continue to write about it, though, despite the challenge.

That’s kind of a side note.

There’s one more thing I’m chewing on, related to families and sex, and it’s the daddy/girl play and the taboo eroticism that keeps families together. But I’m not sure how to express that yet. I’ll keep chewing.

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Ask Me Anything: My Favorite Spanking

Posted on June 1, 2011 in omphaloskepsis | 3 Comments

A.A. asked:

Can you tell us about your most favorite spanking you have ever given?

Hm. I’m not sure I have a favorite spanking that I’ve ever given. That’d be like choosing the best time I had sex or something. Some of the spankings that come to mind were early on in my kink life, when I started figuring out how to be kinky with women (after spending much of my teens being kinky with men. Or rather, boys). I went to a spanking workshop at Babeland once, probably in 1999 or 2000, which was very memorable and awesome, and I very strongly remember the Power & Surrender workshop (much like the recent one) that taught me how to flog. That was probably 2002.

Recently, though … well, I did some flogging at the recent Power & Surrender retreat, which was lovely. I like to spend a long, slow time on warm-up, then use my whole body to whomp for a while. I noticed I was even doing a little bit of a jump to get more of my body weight behind the flogger. I still want more practice flogging—every time I see Lolita flog I want to take classes from her.

Also, Kristen’s birthday was last weekend.

So of course there were spankings. I even got my heavy wooden paddle out. But there could perhaps be more spankings. I’d like to figure out how to leave big heavy bruises on her ass, I don’t tend to do that, but I think it’s time to try.

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Returning from the Power, Surrender, and Intimacy Retreat

Posted on May 18, 2011 in omphaloskepsis | 4 Comments

I’ve returned from retreat, a three-day workshop at Easton Mountain called Power, Surrender, and Intimacy (PSI) through the erotic energy school that I have studied with for more than ten years. I’m producing these workshops these days, as well as assisting, and while our numbers were a little bit low, the workshop was beautifully smooth and overall very successful. There are some shifts happening at the school, so I’m not sure how many more of these I will produce, but I’m really glad to have done this one.

Easton Mountain retreat center, aka gay sex camp, where the workshop was held

I’ve done PSI twice before, once as a participant in about 2002 and once as an assistant here in New York in about 2007. The first one I remember vividly—many of the different pieces of it—and I easily can point to that workshop weekend to say that that is when I discovered I was a top. The entire workshop centers around exploring dominance and submission, power and surrender. I found the surrender parts fairly easy but not particularly heated, and I was shocked to discover not only how I liked to be in charge, channeling power, but also that I had an inner sadist ready to be cultivated.

I couldn’t remember the second workshop very well. In the week up to this one I was trying to think of what I had taken away from it, what it had shifted for me, and as this weekend went on I realized that PSI was a huge tipping point in my study as an assistant, as a leader of this work and as someone who is able to hold, ground, and move erotic energy.

The difference between what I am capable of doing now and what I could do then is significant—I felt so connected, and so able to move the overwhelming emotion that came up for the entire group at various times. There were certainly moments where I nearly panicked with the expectation (that I set on myself, mostly) that I would be able to hold or move something, but generally when faced with that responsibility I could meet it gladly and capably.

The most significant moment of this was during two rituals on Sunday, when we started out with a wand of light tantric meditation (which I can’t seem to find any description of online) in order to raise some of our energies so we could go into the next ritual, which was transformative and about shadow, and very intense. The wand of light meditation starts at the root chakra and builds all the way up to the third eye, one chakra at a time, and I could feel it so intensely, especially toward the end, that I was kind of certain my head was going to come off as energy shot skyward and began exploding things.

I, as an assistant (and having had experienced this ritual before, which the other two assistants had not), was expected to go first in the second ritual. The facilitator described that we shouldn’t calculate what we were going to do, but that we would know it was time to come up when we felt a quickening. Oh, I felt it alright. I knew I had to go up there, and do something with this energy which was pulsing through my spine, but I wasn’t really sure what to do or how to do it.

Gravity by Nikki McClure. This image came to mind when I was trying to ground

I tried to describe it to another one of the assistants later. During the meditation part, I felt the energy rush up into me so intensely and come pouring out of the crown of my head that I layed down to get some better grounding, trying to remember that I was held by gravity, but even that didn’t work: instead of going up through my entire body, it started going from my root chakra through my pelvis and up into my cock, which became so incredibly erect and upright and felt like it was going to shoot off of me.

I sat back up, and tried to ground in other ways.

It dawned on me that this wand of light, this energetic connection to the earth, was there all the time, not just now—it’s something that I’ve dropped into numerous times at tantra workshops in recent years, and it always surprises me that it’s still there, and in fact it’s easier to access the next time around.

Realizing and deeply feeling this connection made me think of something another assistant had said on our ride up: that we are not living on the earth, but living in the earth, since the atmosphere is not actually part of space but part of our unique planet. We swim around in it. We would not survive outside of it. We are held upright to the earth by this magical gravity, but we are not separate. In fact, I felt like a puppet, like this wand of light was actually the earth creating me, coming up into me and animating me.

That is what I would have liked to express when I got up in front of the whole group to open the second ritual. But I couldn’t form words. As a writer and poet I find that extremely frustrating. The facilitator even asked: Are there words to go with this? I was shaking with every breath. Filling up with light and energy and then feeling it pour down my spine again as I breathed out, or pour up through the crown of my head. My hands jerked and felt electric.

“I feel like a column,” I managed to say. Really this energy felt penetrative. It felt like I was being fucked by spirit. It felt like it—and I—was rising out of the earth. It felt like the earth was using me to fuck the sky. I had no idea how to form words, it was all I could do to sit still and not explode.

“I don’t know if I can say more.”

And that was just about it. Three minutes were up, quickly, and I sat back down, unsure if my head was still attached. And then I started to panic. Oh fuck. What if I stay like this? What do I do with all of this energy? What is it going to do to me? It doesn’t seem to be working to just let it flow through me—and by “working” I mean it doesn’t seem to be calming me, but rather ramping me up. How do I calm this quickening? I have to work now, I have to assist and support others in their reveal, how am I going to do that?

Words from another facilitator came to mind: When you feel you can’t handle something, give it to the earth. She can handle anything. I would have tried anything right then. So I redirected all that energy that was coming up through me and thought of it pouring down into the ground, and immediately my head cleared. Immediately I felt so solid and stable and grounded. Immediately I no longer felt crazy but powerful, and powerfully alive.

The ritual poured through me, one person after another, and mostly I was so intensely connected and moved by it that tears just streamed down my cheeks for person after person, and I gave it all back to the earth. Help me hold this, thank you, thank you.

I feel like my reveal was sloppy, and that I was in a little bit of a state of panic when I went up there, but it’s clear that the energy was present and that I was a conduit for it. And the ritual happened, successfully, with the transformative energies we were seeking, so clearly something went right. I don’t know what I would have done if I’d been able to see outside of myself a little better, and it’s clear to me that what I did was the only thing I could have done at that moment. Perhaps it’s the performer in me who would have liked to have a better translation of my experience into my expression. But I can—or will try—to let that tiny sliver of regret go, and to not let it drive me.

What I learned about grounding was powerful, and I think that will stick with me.

There were a couple other fascinating things I’d like to report to you about, though they were not workshop content so much as things around the workshop that came up, like the debate over where female ejaculate comes from (the urethra) and where it is stored (the paraurethral sponge, I discovered). And the conversations around female/feminine sources of power and how easily that power can be mistaken or misused as manipulation instead of power, and how that flavor of power is even encouraged to be manipulation in this culture. And the conversations about butch identity with the facilitator and the other assistant—how there is a constant butch scale in our heads which compares and contrasts us to each other, and fears that we are the least butch of the group. There are many more things I could write about.

But it’s day three of being back, and I have so many things I need to accomplish, my email inboxes are too full, and I’ve been avoiding some regular tasks the last two days as I have been trying to take good care of myself for this re-entry. Perhaps I’ll write more about those things later, I promise I’ll try.

Meanwhile, I’ll get back to the Ask Me Anything questions, and start working on the next retreat, which is my favorite one (a five-day advanced retreat in New Mexico in late July).

I’m curious if you all might have questions for me about this retreat … do you want to know more about it? Which parts?

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